Tuesday, July 28, 2009

9/11: a can of worms

Sibel Edmonds: Jim, you also mentioned the 9/11 Commission and the fact that they did not interview two very important FBI agents who were assigned to the bin Laden unit (ed: Alec Station), and these were Agents Rossini and Doug Miller. Did you find out why, and how that happened?

James Bamford: Well, I thought the Commission did a horrible job.

I spent a lot of time looking at what the Commission was doing, and I was just astonished at how poor a job they did. They not only did not interview Mark Rossini and his partner at the CIA, I mean, I can't think of two more people you'd want to interview than the two FBI agents who were in the CIA's Bin Laden Center at the time everything was happening. They didn't interview them, and I also discovered that they never investigated NSA's role in the entire 9/11.

My book was reviewed in the Washington Post by Bob Kerrey, former Senator from Nebraska who was on the 9/11 Commission, and he said my book went well beyond what the Commission investigated, and what other investigative reporters had come up with thus far. So, I mean, you know, the fact that an author can just, out there on his own, can come up with more than what the entire Commission was able to do, with all the millions of dollars they had, and the enormous staff... Apparently what happened was the Commission had no interest in the NSA whatsoever.

Sibel Edmonds: Of course not.

James Bamford: (Unintelligible) tried to get the staff to look at NSA records, and they just only had an interest in looking at the CIA. The staffers had mentioned that they thought that looking at the CIA was a sexy thing to look at, and looking at the NSA was a lot of people with computers, and they didn't really understand it. So, I mean, it was a terrible investigation.

I actually interviewed Lee Hamilton, the co-Chair of the Commission, and I asked him if he ever interviewed Mike Hayden, the head of the NSA, and he couldn't even remember if he interviewed him! He's the head of the largest intelligence agency in the country, and the co-Chair of the 9/11 Commission couldn't remember if they interviewed or not. It was just extraordinary.

A proper investigation would open up a can of worms. More on that soon.